Mobile home on Leola Drive destroyed by fire
The Piney Fire Department responded to a fire in a mobile home on Leola Drive Thursday night initially thinking there might be people trapped inside, but later discovered it was unoccupied, Piney Fire Chief Scott Miser said Friday.
Firefighters were dispatched shortly after 7 p.m. to 100 Leola Drive to a structure fire “with people possibly inside,” Miser told The Sentinel-Record. “When we arrived we found a double-wide mobile home with multiple additions that was 80% involved with flames.”
With about 20 firefighters responding, they started “a defensive attack” to save structures that were in danger “while trying to confirm whether
we had anyone inside or not, although the conditions would have been fatal,” he said.
“It took us about 30 minutes to get initial knockdown on the fire and another couple of hours to do salvage and overhaul,” he said, noting as they continued to fight the fire “we figured out that most likely there was no one inside due to eyewitness statements which we later confirmed.”
Miser said there were no injuries and no other structures were damaged, but the home was “a total loss.”
He noted Piney was the only department at the scene and they had responded with two engines and one tanker.
Asked about the possible cause of the fire, Miser said it was under investigation but the residents had reportedly had “multiple threats from a family member about burning this residence down” previously, so the incident was turned over to the Garland County Sheriff’s Department for further investigation.
Asked about the incident, Sheriff’s Deputy Courtney Kizer, the department’s public information officer, told the newspaper, “We can confirm that there was a residential fire at 100 Leola (Thursday) and it is standard procedure for the criminal investigation division as well as (Arkansas) State Police arson investigators to investigate these types of fires until the cause can be determined.”